


After 02x12 (the Zanzibar Marketplace Job)

by PseudoLeigha



Series: (More) 2AM Conversations [26]
Category: Leverage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-17
Updated: 2016-04-17
Packaged: 2018-06-02 17:32:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6575794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PseudoLeigha/pseuds/PseudoLeigha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hardison and Nate talk about Maggie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After 02x12 (the Zanzibar Marketplace Job)

After Maggie left the bar, Nate stuck around.

Eliot had long since left – most likely, Nate thought, to work off his frustration on having to deal with Sterling and getting taken advantage of by the pretentious asshole _again_. (If Nate was honest with himself, he felt a bit bad about that – he had, after all, once assured Eliot that Sterling wouldn’t be a problem, and now he was at fucking _Interpol_ , thanks to _their_ hard work.)

Parker disappeared not long after, and Nate had gotten a text from Maggie asking him to kindly stop his people from following her home. He strongly suspected that Parker had wanted to make sure the woman she still considered ‘adorable’ got home safely, and he hadn’t the foggiest idea of what he was meant to do to stop her, especially if she decided to shadow her all the way back to California.

Tara had been flirting with various locals for drinks for most of the evening, but she had allowed one of them to pick her up about half an hour before last call, leaving only Hardison to keep him company. Nate suspected that despite, or possibly _because of_ Tara’s relatively permissive attitude toward drinking (at least in comparison to Sophie), the kids were attempting to keep an eye on him. It was vaguely irritating, but also sweet, in a demented, ‘these people need to learn personal boundaries’ way. Unless Sophie had coordinated it – he knew she had been talking to them all, regardless of her request for ‘distance’ – in which case it was one hundred percent infuriating. If she wanted to walk away, what he did after was _none_ of her business.

The hacker was nursing a sickly sweet cocktail – Bailey’s and Buttershots, not so much a drink as a slightly alcoholic desert in a shot glass – and fiddling around on his phone, which was almost, Nate granted, as good as being left alone entirely. He finished off his fourth Irish coffee and stood to get a last refill.

“You good,” he smirked at the younger man, “or you want another?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, sure. Thanks, man. It’s called a Buttery Nipple.”

Nate did a double-take. “A _what_?”

“Hey, don’t look at me! I didn’ name it, an’ they’ tasty!”

The older man rolled his eyes. Hardison would probably eat sugar and nothing else if left to his own devices. But he wasn’t really in a position to pass judgement on others’ vices. “Right, one _Buttery Nipple_ coming right up.”

Breaking the silence between them to offer a drink must have seemed like an invitation to Hardison, because as soon as Nate returned to their booth, he asked, “So, Nate, man… What’s up with you an’ Maggie?”

Nate snorted. “That is an _excellent_ question, Hardison. Really fucking good question. Let me know if you figure it out, yeah?”

“Wait. You don’ know? Cause Parker said you two were makin’ out in that elevator like it was goin’ outta style.”

“ _Parker_ said that?” he raised an eyebrow in disbelief.

Hardison shrugged. “I mighta paraphrased a li’l bit. But c’mon, man, what’s up with that?”

“I don’t know. She thought we were going to die. I thought we were going to die. It was just one of those things. It didn’t mean anything.”

“Man, you gotta have more faith in us. We weren’ gonna let you die. But she wanted the las’ thing she ever did to be kissin’ you? I’d say that means _somethin’_.”

Nate sighed, staring into his coffee. “I thought so, too. Asked her if she’d stay. She says she’s headed back to L.A.”

The younger man’s face twisted into a sympathetic wince. “Tha’s cold, man.”

“I can’t really blame her,” he shrugged. “I pushed her away, before, and it’s not like I’ve gone out of my way to try to get her back.”

“Well _yeah_ , but, um…”

“’But, um…’ what, Hardison?”

“But, um… we all thought that was ‘cause you was into Sophie, you know?”

An involuntary, strangled noise of frustration escaped from Nate’s throat. “Is there any man on the fucking planet who’s _not_ into Sophie? We weren’t dating. We were never _together_. And just because she’s gone doesn’t mean I’m going to go crawling back to Maggie! It’s not like I left Maggie because of Sophie. She left _me_ because…”

“Because you turned into a depressed alcoholic when your son died, and she couldn’t handle it?” Hardison offered, in a tone that was almost Parker-esque in its coolness.

It was met by a humorless snort. “It’s not exactly what she signed up for. And I wasn’t there for her any more than she was for me. Sometimes things just don’t work out, Hardison. I don’t blame her. I’m pretty sure she doesn’t blame me. She says…”

“What?”

Nate scrutinized the younger man’s expression closely for a long moment before he answered, finding nothing but open, honest curiosity in his gaze. “She says she likes the man I’ve become, and she wishes I did, too.”

Hardison contemplated this for a moment. “Sounds like good advice.”

The older man said nothing, allowing the conversation to lapse into silence and attending to his rapidly-cooling coffee.

After a time, the hacker spoke again, in his most tentative tone. “Have you, um… that is, have you ever considered talkin’ to someone about, you know, everything? Like a professional, I mean.”

Nate’s gut reaction was to snap that he didn’t need that kind of help, but he checked himself, limiting it to a sardonic, “Yeah, I’m sure telling a shrink that I’m having a crisis of conscience over trying to atone for failing to save my son by leading a crew of internationally renowned thieves to commit acts of vigilante justice would go over _real_ well.”

The kid just raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “You know what I meant,” he said, knocking back the remaining half-shot of sickly-sweet liquor in his glass and rising from the table. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Nate watched him wave a pleasant farewell to the bartender, Max, quietly impressed by how much he had matured in the two years since they’d first met. He did know what he’d meant. Talk to someone about Sam. About Maggie. About the drinking, too, probably. Sophie had told him the same thing, more than once, after the rehab job. And he’d told her the same thing he wanted to tell Hardison: He didn’t need their help. He could, would, and was dealing with it – with his own problems. He didn’t need or want some ‘expert’ telling him exactly how fucked-up he was. _Believe me, I already know_.

Max was giving Nate, the last patron of the night, a look that said, ‘Go home so I can lock the damn doors!’ He was too polite to say it aloud, knowing what Nate and his crew had done for the bar and the neighborhood, but he obviously wanted to. He swallowed the last of his whisky-laced coffee and made his own way toward the exit, trying not to read too much into the cold, burning bitterness. There was probably some kind of metaphor in there for his life, but he didn’t want to think about it.


End file.
